This week marks the first anniversary of my blog. A year ago, I decided to create this blog to help improve my writing and do more of it and share it with the world. Before, my writing was very random and sporadic, and all over the place. I had various pieces saved on my cloud drive and flash drive, and nobody ever saw or read any of it. Not even me. This blog gave my writing a new life and another chance, and most importantly, it gave me an excellent opportunity to write more and write regularly.
I decided to create this blog because I wanted to get my writing out there in the world. Before, in my early days, I was trying to submit as much as possible to various journals and literary publications, and magazines with very little or no success. It could be because it wasn’t any good, or because there were too many submissions to choose from, or because of the content itself, or because what I write is not necessary the pretty and safe writing I’ve seen in so many places. After a few years, I had a few successful submissions, and then I asked myself, why in the fuck am I wasting so much time and effort and money trying to get accepted by some assholes who will decide my future as a writer. I wanted to determine my future as a writer. I didn’t have to wait for someone else’s acceptance.
Looking back at it now, all I needed then was to get at least something accepted and published by another publication, so I could proudly call myself a writer, a poet, or whatever. That moment came, and it was a very proud moment in my life. I was finally happy for a short period of time. After so many efforts, somebody read my work, liked it, and offered to publish one of my poems. Great, mission accomplished. However, that feeling of great success was relatively short-lived, and soon I felt empty again. I mean, it wasn’t enough. I thought that I need to do more, that I need to write more, and for fuck’s sake, I need to stop worrying about being accepted and published. All I needed was to focus on my writing, and work it out, develop my style, work on my poems, craft my lines, develop my sentences, dialogues, prose, all of it. Finally, I was able to write whatever hell I wanted, and it all is published now, here on this blog.
It is hard to believe that another year has gone. It is even harder to believe that we all ended up in the world that we do live right now. And it is even harder to believe that there is a great future ahead of us as it seems to be more like the end of civilization or the beginning of the terrible nation and world division. Nonetheless, life goes on, and it could be as bad and as hard as you fucking made it to be. We are the owners, or we all should be the owners of our lives and our destiny, and it is up to us to make all the right and wrong decisions and stay afloat. It took me a while to figure it out and find my way out of it. The pandemic depression still consumes me. However, I am trying to live my life as normally as I possibly can. Even with the mask on, there is a shit ton of stuff you can go out and do and stop feeling like a prisoner in your own home. The only thing that kept me going and remained a regular practice for me was my writing. I wrote something all the time. I have committed to this blog to post regularly. I committed four years ago to become a writer, and that is what I aspired to do. I don’t do this for the money; I don’t sell any ads, I don’t care how many people will read this blog. All I care about is that I am staying productive and writing regularly. And weirdly enough, this makes me feel happy and accomplished.
One day in mid-2019, I was listening to The Minimalists podcast, and Joshua Fields Millburn mentioned the idea of creating your own blog on one of the episodes. That sounded like an exciting idea to me; however, I was stressed with the hustle of creating a website and setting everything up. The solution was right there. I found a video on YouTube with Joshua explaining how to build your blog in a very simple way. I followed all directions, and I was able to create my site. The most crucial thing regarding the blog Joshua mentioned was, don’t worry about all the technical stuff, create a simple blog, and start writing. That was what resonated with me and what helped me during the whole process. Over time I looked up some technical videos online on how to set up various features and functions. This is how this blog was born.
Another significant milestone that I have achieved in writing was self-publishing my first and long-time-coming book, a collection of poetry. I started to write poetry in 2016 under the heavy influence of Charles Bukowski, and the idea of becoming a writer and a poet was conceived. I wrote poetry mainly first, and there were a significant amount of the poems collected over the years. I needed to do something with all that work. It wasn’t all that great, but it was mine. Each of those poems reflected something happening inside of me. It recalled a piece and moment of my life, what I was seeing, feeling, and thinking at the moment. Many of my poems were sad, mean, and depressing, but I always say that poets are rarely happy people, especially in their poetry. Writing a poem is seldom influenced by a happy feeling in one mind. It has to be in most cases a strong feeling of depression, sadness, stress, anger, that will sit you down and make you write. I always heard the voice of Bukowski in my head when I was writing my poems. Writing poetry had opened a new world for me. Charles Bukowski had opened a new world for me, and this is why I dedicated my debut book “My poems my soul” to him.
Keeping up with my blog made me a better writer. Most importantly, it made me write more, more often, and more regularly. Before, I wrote based on my rare inspiration, whenever it came or whenever I could capture it at the moment and sit down to write. Now it was like, I’m here, every morning at 6 or 7 o’clock, let’s get down to it. Whatever comes to my mind during those early hours is what gets on the page. I rarely re-write anything; it comes more or less in the original form and my initial thoughts, which gives my writing a raw, organic, and most importantly, authentic sound. I don’t write poems as often as I used to. The prose gets out there more quickly and excites me much more. I still write poetry once in a while, and I try to have at least one poem a month posted on my blog, to keep things interesting.
What’s next for my blog? I wish I knew. One thing I know for sure is that I will keep it going; I’ll keep things running here for as long as I can or as long as it makes sense for me to do. I found this blog very inspirational and helpful for myself primarily, and I hope as time goes by, others will discover it as well. I don’t care if and how many people are reading it every day or every month; what matters is that I am interested in putting out the content regularly every month and working on that content every day. I’ve read a great quote recently, and it was something like “I know I am a writer because I want to write regardless if anyone will read it, or if I get paid for it, I just want to write.” The idea is to keep on fucking writing, and if you are good enough and motivated enough, you will find your way. But mainly, it will keep you sane and fulfilled and happy doing what you love to do the most, to write. Happy birthday, johnloraine.com! You’ve survived your first and here’s to so many more years ahead!